Jolt is a Java Virtual Machine Daemon. This program provides a means to invoke the JDK tools javac, javadoc, and jar from the command line while reusing the same JVM instance across invocations.

Jolt daemon is intended primarily for use as a helper tool to make compilation of Java code with make as fast as (and potentially faster than) with Jakarta Ant.

It can also be used to run arbitrary Java programs (as with java); this is particularly useful for command-line utilities that are run over and over, where the cost of launching the JVM each time would be prohibitive (or at the very least, annoying).

Usage:

The `runjolt' shell script can be used as a wrapper for the `jolt' binary. It checks for the presence of the JAVA_HOME environment variable (which should be set to the top-level installation directory of JDK 1.4.0 or later) and augments LD_LIBRARY_PATH accordingly before invoking `jolt' proper.